Chaotic Intervention
by Nights Mistress
Summary: When Miles was abducted by a good intentioned Ivan, neither were to know of outside events.
1. Chapter 1

It had not been a good week, Ivan decided after much deliberation. Then again, weeks spent in the company of Miles rarely were. Interesting, yes. Completely chaotic, yes. Sedate? Not likely. The only time that Miles was ever even remotely still was when he was unconscious and that was only in comparison to his natural state. Simon Illyan's assessment of him was all too true. And whenever Miles got into trouble lately, who was it that had to extract him from it? None other then his long-suffering cousin Ivan. Which was why he was covered in mud and feeling very sorry for himself. His one consolation was that Miles was also sharing his discomfit, though judging by the manic grin he wore, he was ignoring it for more pressing concerns. Namely the disruptor shots being fired over their ditch.

Ivan moaned softly. It wasn't fair! His mother had told him 'Take Miles out, he's being a little….difficult.' Ivan correctly interpreted this as meaning 'The little snot's getting underfoot again, so get him out of here before someone kills him,' and attempted to do so with alacrity. Unfortunately, Miles had not been so co-operative. He had insisted that ….whatever he was doing, was infinitely more important then him going out. Ivan, empowered by the might of right, or at the very least, the implicit support of his mother, had merely picked up the squirming Miles and carried him to the lightflyer. Miles, who had not been impressed by the recent turn of events, had attempted every tactic he knew to break free. Ivan was vaguely worried that he'd break something, the way he was carrying on. He contemplated a sedative, then decided against it, as Miles tended to be somewhat ingenious when someone had annoyed him royally, and sedating him was a good way of ensuring his annoyance.

Having finally managed to get Miles in the lightflyer, Ivan slammed the door shut and started the launch sequence. Miles glared at him, reproach in his grey eyes. Ivan smirked at him and finished the sequence. The lightflyer started to move, slowly at first, then faster, gaining speed and lift under its wings. The nose bobbled for momentarily, then stabilized in an upwards trajectory, a direction that the rest of the plane seemed to follow. Once it was off the ground, Ivan turned back around to Miles.

"And what was that for?" Miles asked, raising an eyebrow and folding his arms. "What have I done to you lately?" Ivan frowned as he mentally called up a list of recent misdemeanors toward him. It was quite an impressive list. 

"Define lately," he replied, folding his arms. Miles rolled his eyes.

"It was a _rhetorical_ question," he pointed out dryly. "The type where you don't expect an answer." Ivan repressed a sigh. He was well aware of what 'rhetorical' meant. This insistance of people assume he was moronic, while frequently useful, could get tiring after a while. It was especially annoying when Miles did it.

"Milady mother has decreed that you are an annoyance best removed from her presence before she hires assassins, so I was co-opted into this," he explained absently, keeping an eye on the screen as he flew the aircraft. While the autopilot was adequate, sometimes it wasn't as responsive as he would have liked. "Other then summon Aunt Cordelia from council, I had to drag you out. Hence the kidnapping." Ivan shrugged. "Surely it's not as bad as all that?" Miles scowled.

"I was in the middle of something," he replied somewhat petulantly. Ivan was unimpressed. Miles frequently had temper tantrums. They got boring after a year or two.

"You always interrupt me in the middle of something," Ivan pointed out reasonably. Miles' scowl deepened.

"Yeah, but it's different," he replied. Ivan failed to see the distinction, and said as much. Miles rolled his eyes and replied with "It just is." Ivan could tell a dead subject when he saw it. There was an awkward silence that seemed to stretch for an eternity.

"So, what do you think of Anna Vorrokson?" Ivan asked brightly in an effort to break the tension. Miles' eyebrows reached his hairline. 

"Of whom?" he asked in bewilderment.

"Anna!" Ivan replied. "You know, the girl at Gregor's last ball. Her?" Miles frowned.

"Ivan, all of the Vor were there. I need more details."

"You know, the girl with the hair," Ivan gestured in a vague way to his head, "and the face and the body?" Miles looked dubious.

"Most girls I know fit that description," he pointed out dryly. "I have a suspicion that girls in general fit that description, to be honest." Ivan sighed. How else could he describe her? Shrugging, he glanced back at the panel. He hissed in a breath and frowned at the display.

 There was another lightflyer flying too close for comfort. Miles, seeing his look of consternation, stood up and propped his head over Ivan's shoulder. Ivan started to pitch the plane to the left when he felt Miles' hand tighten painfully on his shoulder.

"Roll it," he said shortly, removing his hand from Ivan's shoulder. Ivan waited until he was reasonably sure that Miles was strapped in and then rolled the flyer sharply. He blinked rapidly as the blood rushed to his head and continued the spin, pitching to the right as he did so. When the flyer righted itself, he glanced at the display. Their tailer was still there, hovering just inside their sensors. If this were any other lightflyer, it would be outside the range of influence, but this one had been specially crafted for Lord Vorkosigan when Ivan was about twelve, a fact that Ivan was extremely grateful of at the moment.

"Why'd you tell me to do that for?" he protested to where he knew Miles would be sitting. "What did that achieve?" 

"The pilot thinks we're Vor brats on a joyride," Miles replied. Even though Ivan couldn't see him, he could hear Miles' smirk in the tone of his voice. "And so we're going to maintain that illusion." Ivan thought that through.

"Two problems," he pointed out, counting on his fingers. "One, we have no idea what the pilot's doing, but chances are it's nothing we'll like, and two, we can't escape him by mucking around." There was a pregnant pause. Ivan swore. "No! We agreed that you'd never do that again!"

"Pass me the controls, Ivan," Miles replied calmly. Ivan shook his head. 

"Not likely! Does it look like I have a death wish?" Ivan blurted. "No, don't answer that one." The flyer beeped insistently, the proximity light illuminating the dashboard. Ivan glanced at the display again. The unknown flyer had flown awfully close to them, which was rather disconcerting. He sighed and passed control to Miles. As he caught a glimpse of what Miles was programming into the plane, he groaned slightly and closed his eyes. This was not going to be pretty.

*

As the plane pulled out of a stalled barrel roll, Ivan opened his eyes enough to recognize the ground coming toward them very quickly. He swore again and snatched a glimpse at Miles. He looked to be having the time of his life, teeth bared and fingers moving frantically over the controls, eyes flicking over the instruments. He pulled the plane out of the descent a bare four thousand feet above ground and yawed the plane to the right. Their pursuer mimicked their movements exactly. Ivan appreciated the skill it took to mimic Miles. Generally it took a death wish, or an incredible sense of your own invincibility. He wasn't exactly sure which motivated Miles. Probably a mixture of the two.

He looked down at the display and made an incoherent noise of panic. Miles ignored it, absorbed in the flickering lights of the avionics equipment. The lights were strangely hypnotic, when you thought about it. 

"Miles," Ivan hissed urgently. "There's a second one!" Miles' head whipped toward him, eyes wide and teeth bared in a grimace.

"Where?" he demanded, taking his eyes off the equipment momentarily. Unfortunately, Ivan wasn't able to tell him, as it clipped the left wing, removing a medium sized portion of it. The flyer started to spiral sharply to the left, falling rapidly as it did so. Miles tried to force the plane to turn to the right, but the controls responded sluggishly and the plane continued to fall.

"Tighten your straps, you idiot!" Ivan yelled, noticing for the first time that Miles' restraints were rather loose. Miles gave up on attempting to control the landing and tightened the straps. 

"Brace for impact!" Miles yelled in return. Ivan was unimpressed by this, even while completely terrified. He knew very well that they were going to hit the ground; there was no need to tell him as much. He loosened his straps and turned around to Miles, mouth open to say something approximating this when the plane hit the ground. 

*

"You idiot, Ivan," was the first thing Ivan heard as he regained consciousness. Ivan moaned, more in protest at the comment then about the concussion that he was sure he had. He opened his eyes and squinted at Miles' concerned face from the floor. "Why did you loosen your straps for?"

Ivan doubted that replying 'because I wanted to yell abuse at you' was the correct answer. Neither was 'they were tight before we crashed, they must have loosened on the impact.' He contemplated shrugging, but realized that would jostle his head too much. "I don't know," he replied finally. Miles sighed in frustration, running his hand through his hair and pushing it into disarray. This, in combination with his meager height, made him look like a demented pixie, and Ivan snickered at the mental image. Judging from Miles' expression, he sounded completely and utterly insane. Which from Miles was saying a lot. Ivan swallowed his laughter and looked at Miles soberly.

"You hurt? Who knocked us out of the sky?" he asked. Miles shrugged eloquently, a liquid gesture that only a sixteen year old boy could do. 

"No, and don't know. And, before you ask, we're somewhere in the Dendarii mountains. Where, exactly, I can't say," Miles replied shortly. He turned away from Ivan and started fiddling with something, its details obscured from Ivan's vision by Miles' back.

"Hang on a second," Ivan protested, propping himself on his elbows. He closed his eyes against a wave of dizziness. Definitely a concussion. "We have a navigation system onboard." Miles made an incoherent noise. "We _did_ have one….Miles, what have you done?"

"It was already broken!" Miles protested. "I just…made something else out of it." Ivan raised an eyebrow. "It's a transmitter, sending a signal at a certain frequency that only I use. Someone will pick it up, then all they have to do is track it. Easy."

Ivan groaned. Whenever Miles said something was 'easy' it generally meant that it was absolute chaos. In fact, he was struggling to remember a time when that wasn't the case. He came up empty handed.

"Anyway, we have to get out of here," Miles pointed out. "The pilots of the lightflyers will be down shortly and we can't stay here." Ivan knew that. It was just that he really couldn't be bothered to get up at the moment. Miles sighed, reached under Ivan's chair and pulled out the medical kit. He pulled out a hypospray and injected it into Ivan's neck. Ivan glared at him for that.

"Now, move!" Miles demanded, eyes blazing. Ivan winced. He was going to make either a great leader, a hellish one, or all of the above. He pushed himself to his feet in a series of stages, then staggered gracelessly after Miles. He stole a glance back at their lightflyer and winced at the damage. Lord Vorkosigan was not going to be happy when he heard that he and Miles had completely ruined his lightflyer. He gazed in mingled awe and horror at the crumpled nose, his brain chanting 'You were in that.' Shivering, he turned away and continued walking.


	2. Chapter 2

"The real question is," Miles mused as they trudged through the scrubland. "Which faction shot us down?" Ivan ignored him, being more interested in avoiding the holes, branches and other obstacles that appeared underfoot distressingly frequently. He wondered idly how Miles had breath enough to speak at all, let alone the sheer torrent that he was indulging in at the moment. Surely, he being shorter than Ivan, he would have to move more quickly in order to keep up with Ivan and therefore be short of breath. Evidently this was not the case.

"Were they aiming at me, my father, the Vor or some other concept?" Miles continued, not even having the grace to sound out of breath as he avoided a hole and jumped over a log. Ivan resisted the urge to punch him. It would not do to break Miles' skull. It would displease Aunt Cordelia, which would then displease mother. Never a good idea to annoy Alys Vorpatril. It was during this thought process that Ivan planted his foot into a shallow depression and tripped. 

Catching himself on his hands and knees, Ivan swore. It was a rather unsatisfying experience. Picking himself up, he glared at Miles. Miles looked affronted.

"Miles, we _don't know _who knocked us down. Ranting about it isn't going to help," Ivan snapped. He raked his hand through his hair, brushing it from his face. "And, while I understand moving away from the lightflyer was a good idea, why are we still moving?" He didn't think he needed to point out that by continually moving, it made them a more difficult target for the authorities to find.

Miles responded with a look that Ivan was becoming very used to; the 'why am I stuck with such an idiot' look. Miles was quite good at it, almost as good as his father. Ivan worried about the day Miles surpassed his father in that regard. 

"Because by moving, we create a more difficult target for our attackers to find," Miles replied slowly, as if to be reasonable. It came across as condescending. Ivan gritted his teeth. 

"And we create a more difficult target for our _rescuers_," Ivan ground out. There was silence. "Miles, you weren't planning of walking back home, were you?" Ivan asked plaintively. 

"Well, not all the way back," Miles began evasively. Ivan sighed. "Oh stop playing the martyr."

"I'm hardly playing," Ivan retorted. "Why did I get stuck with you?" Miles opened his mouth, presumably to point out that Ivan had kidnapped him, and therefore was responsible for his own problems. "Don't answer that," Ivan said quickly and Miles shut his mouth with a snap and a reproachful look.

"So, the devious plan is to walk _all _the way home. Right. While we don't have a clue where we are, apart from a rather large geographical landmark. Am I the only one to whom this plan makes absolutely no sense whatsoever?" Ivan commented. 

"It wasn't quite like that," Miles protested. Ivan raised an eyebrow. "There was going to be a bit of dead reckoning involved. The error's practically negligible." Ivan shook his head. While he didn't share the fascination Miles had for archaic military technologies, he had heard of dead reckoning and the inherent problems with it.

"Miles, you are aware that for dead reckoning, you kind of need to know which direction our target is, aren't you?" Ivan asked. There was a guilty silence, then a quiet "Damn." Ivan decided that he was not going to dignify that with a comment. Silence reigned.

The scrub was very annoying, Ivan mused as he was entangled for the thirtieth time. He was getting very close to deciding that maybe the Cetagandans had the right idea, and simply nuking the countryside. While that would cause absolute havoc among future generations, cause paranoia over mutations and leave unsightly craters on the ground, Ivan would not have to put up with plants and their obsession to catch at him. Although, knowing his luck, the plants would survive and mutate into some alien form with six inch thorns and the ability to walk around. The world would be run over by them and humans would be their slaves, except the ones that escaped and lived in the wild.

That last thought was a little…weird. Maybe that medication Miles gave him earlier was messing with his head. Or maybe Miles' insanity was contagious. God, he hoped not. He decided against that, seeing that if it was, then there would be a lot of mental people running around. Then again, there were a lot of strange Vor and Miles had contact with them…

That was a thought that Ivan quickly squashed. If insanity was contagious, then he, being the one with the most contact with Miles, would have been the first affected. That was not a comforting thought.

"Miles," Ivan asked suspiciously. "What did you give me?" Miles frowned.

"Just a standard painkiller," he replied innocently. "Why?" Ivan shrugged. No need to point out his strange thought processes lately; Miles would simply comment that Ivan was always like that.

"Just curious," Ivan replied, ducking a tree branch. He raised his head only to be whipped in the face with a trailing tree branch. The foliage was in fact out to get him, possibly in pre-emptive vengeance for their brethren they would probably have to burn later. Nights on Barrayar could be cold at times.

*

Miles had been very quiet lately. It was disconcerting. Ivan turned his head and glanced down at his cousin. He had a distinct look of concern on his face, verging on worried as he glanced down at an inelegant piece of electronic jury-rigging – the transmitter. As Miles tended to panic when the situation turned dire, Ivan frowned.

"Miles?" he prompted. Miles looked up and unsuccessfully attempted to wipe his concern from his face. "What's wrong?" 

"You know the transmitter? One of the components just died," Miles said quickly. "But it'll be alright!" he added. Ivan didn't say anything. He didn't need to. "Maybe we should call it a day," he offered. Ivan acquiesced very quickly. It had to be one of Miles' better ideas. 

It was a good thing that Aral Vorkosigan had insisted that both Miles and Ivan learn how to make a bush shelter; otherwise they would have been in dire straits indeed. This didn't mean that their shelter was particularly stable or waterproof, but it should provide some shelter. Ivan reasoned that they'd take it in turns keeping watch and set up a fire accordingly. Unfortunately, they were unable to light it using the friction method, so they cheated a little. The transmitter wasn't going to be good for much anyway.

The resulting fire smelt unpleasantly of plastic, but it was a small price to pay.

*

Ivan had claimed the first watch, reasoning that he would be hell to wake up later on. Miles agreed, having experienced the dubious thrill of waking Ivan. Generally it involved swearing and outflung limbs, which if you were as fragile as Miles was not a good thing. Ivan didn't point out that he didn't think he'd been all that alert after waking up either. The medication was wearing off, leaving him with a dull headache and a distressing tendency of seeing double occasionally.

He stared into the flames, mesmerised by the flickering and crackle of the flames. As such, he was startled when he was tapped on the shoulder. Jumping in surprise, he whipped his head around. Miles smiled apologetically and motioned toward the shelter. Ivan didn't argue.

He was awoken all too soon by Miles shaking him vigorously on the shoulder. He squinted blearily up at Miles' concerned face.

"Wassup?" he slurred, cursing his inability to communicate clearly. Miles nodded toward the outside of the shelter. There were loud voices coming toward them, marked with the distinctive accent of the hill-folk. 

"We have guests," Miles commented unnecessarily. Ivan grunted and propped himself upright on his elbows.

"And?" he asked.

"You're talking to them," Miles said bluntly. Ivan felt his eyebrows go to his hairline.

"Excuse me, but are they not yours?" he asked. Miles glared at him and swept a hand down his body. Ivan rolled his eyes. "You just don't want to talk to them, do you?"

"Well, no," Miles replied. "So you are." Ivan rolled his eyes but didn't argue. He had learnt from past experience that arguing with Miles simply gave you a headache and the feeling that somehow you had been conned into something. He pulled himself out of the tent and squinted past the fire.

"Hey!" he called. The shadowy group stopped and turned as a whole toward him. It was beautifully synchronised, suggesting either practise or mere coincidence. "Where are we?" One smart alec replied with, "Over there," which was possibly accompanied with a gesture toward Ivan.  "No, really," Ivan insisted. "Where are we?"

"Dendarii Mountains," replied someone else, with the tones of 'my god, what kind of idiot are you.' Ivan gave up. That was probably the best he was going to get.


End file.
